You reap what you sew.
As much as I’d like to subscribe to this, I really think it’s a load of horseshit. I have known to many assholes who have lead happy-go-lucky lives and too many good people who have been miserable for me to believe it.
I think that Karma is just a way for good people to feel OK with their actions and at the same time wish harm on evil people.
Mods, if this should go to GD, then so be it. I didn’t think it was quite “meaty” enough to go over there.
To “subscribe to this” you need to understand first to what you are subscribing. If you want a definition of Karma, it’s not what you think obviously. Karma is a Brahminist, later Buddhist, term referring to the negative actions done both in previous and past lives of ones self and ancestors. De is the positive. The belief/theory (Considering Buddhism is less religion than it is philosophy) is that there is a balance in the universe, and the upset of this balance will bring about repercussions eventually so that the area in which there was an inbalance will become balanced again. So the “a$$ holes” may not “get theirs”, but their descendents may. And likewise for the good people. It in no way says it’s ok to wish harm on others, this is bad Karma. To wish harm on others in this belief, is to wish harm on yourself.
Soulsling, in reading your post, and more thinking, I see that what I posted could be construed as pretty offensive to Buddhists. I apologize, and please realize that it was not my intention.
Well, let me rephrase. Do you believe in “What comes around goes around?”
In my view, the @$$holes of the world seem to get by and lead good lives, while the rest of us seem to suffer. Nothing bad ever happens to them, no one has the guts to call them on their behavior and no one seems willing to stop them.
No offense was taken. I just thought that if you knew the whole of it, you might understand why there are people who do believe it. As to simplifying it to this physical world that we live in, I still find that what comes around goes around. Not right away mind you, but I’ve seen plenty of people get their come uppance in my short time here so far.
What are you measuring this by? Do you know if they are actually happy?
I suppose this alludes eventually to does success = happiness. What kind of success and all that…
One story, Two words. “Richard Cory”.
It’s also not only a Buddhist theory. I know Wicca has the law of threes, whatever you put out into the world, be positive energy or negative energy, will return to you threefold. I think that’s how it goes. No one cast a spell on me if I’m wrong, K?
In fact, the concept of karma/de isn’t that different from the Christian notion of everything that you do is being recorded, and St. Peter will make you atone for all your misdeeds. Instead, in Buddhism, it’s just a direct cause-and-effect, as Buddhism is a non-theistic religion. Instead of answering to a god-figure, you are answering to yourself, and your decendants.
And, to quote one of my favorite scarey movies, * Dead Again*: “Karma. The only cosmic force with a deadly sense of humor.”
You can believe whatever you want to believe, so I’m not going to argue the validity of your belief. I say this only because I hate it when people do that to me.
But …
I was brought up in a small town in Maine which was predominately Catholic. My family was Protestant with a few severely religious kin, but not my parents, thank god (pun intended). I have never been able to rationalize things that have happened in my life as they relate to any form of Christianity. I prayed to god as a kid, and went to church. Shitty things still happened to me. And I’ve seen and read about the most atrocious occurances in the name of god. This doesn’t sit well with me.
But the basic theory of Karma(sp?) as you have laid it out makes a world of sense to me. But I see it as a combination of self-direction and physics. Allow me to explain.
Self-direction: If I do something which I am ashamed of or which I consider morally wrong to have done, that will weigh on my mind and I will sub-conciously, get back at myself for doing it. That is, I may allow myself to be put in a stituation, where I may be the butt, if you will, of an equally immoral wrong.
Physics: It is understood that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. I like to think that this carries forth from the physical world into the spiritual (for lack of a better term) world.
It is my opinion that the above mentioned two theories work in conjunction to present the appearance of Karma.
At least that is the premise of what I call my own personal religion.
Hey, don’t knock it, it keeps me on the straight and narrow.
<attempting to cast a spell on Swiddles which will make her laugh briefly if she happens to feel like it>
Seriously, that’s a fair statement of the Law of Threefold Return. That “law” is why we don’t attempt harmful spells (besides, it gets your soul all sticky). Being a relatively pragmatic Wiccan, I see this more as a social effect than a spiritual one. Do I really believe in Karma? <shrug> I don’t know, but I do believe that if you behave wrongly, you’ll wind up unhappy–if only because nobody likes you.
“Gets your soul all sticky”??? Thank you for the best laugh I’ve had so far today, hon.
As for believing in karma…I had this discussion with a friend last night over IRC. And right now I’d have to honestly say that NO, I don’t believe in it. Too much bad shit had happened to me and him for us to believe in it right now. sigh I keep hoping that eventually being a good person will pay off. Not that that’s the reason I’m nice. Perhaps I should just stop rambling now…
Ah, yes, my winged friend, but if you’re a Buddhist, the bad stuff you’re dealing with could be repercussions from mistakes made in previous lives, or could be repercussions from misdeeds commited by your ancestors. The ol’ reincarnation loophole. The idea is the same as Christianity, you’d better be good now, or else you’ll pay later. I’m with Balence, I like to keep my soul as un-sticky as possible.
Yeah, sticky souls are hard to clean, and hard to take out of your body. Whenever I go around stealing peoples souls, I avoid the sticky ones… oh, woops… sorry, I wasn’t suppsed to let you in on that line of my work…
Yet ANOTHER reason to keep my soul unsticky…to make life easier for soulsling.
And Swiddles…my point was that I don’t do nice things to get nice things back. I just do them because I want to. However, being HUMAN, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of these rewards sometime this century. Did I make more sense this time?
(And hell, according to my parents sometimes, they got paid back for any misdeeds by having an ungrateful daughter…)
While I know any number of good people who have had bad things happen, they all seem to have suffered from something unavoidable, like poor health.
By contrast, I have known quite a few @ssholes who successfully managed to screw up their own lives (tax fraud, gambling, shoddy business practices that come back to haunt them, etc.)
So while I do believe in karma, I also believe that sometimes sh*t just happens.
I think one’s answer to the question depends somewhat on one’s moral codes and values.
for instance, you might know someone who’s a complete asshole, who also happens to be rich, good-looking, and appears to be quite happy.
I wouldn’t necessarily consider that person to be “getting away with” anything, though, because my experience shows me that if you’re always treating the people around you like shit, you ultimately end up pretty lonely. At least, it’s hard to achieve any real intimacy. I think that sort of a life would be unbearable.
On the other hand, if you subscribe to “he who dies with the most toys wins” then maybe that SOB is getting away with something.
So at least some of this depends on your own individual “rules”.
As far as tragic things happening to innocent people, it seems to me that tragic things happen pretty randomly to everyone, and I never interpreted the law of Karma to mean that if one acts justly terrible things will never happen.
I don’t believe in magic, like somebody mugs a little old lady and the next day a piano falls on his head.
But I do believe that your life is pretty much how you make it. How you treat people comes back to you in many ways, both direct and indirect. It’s my experience that people who spread misery tend to be miserable and I don’t believe that’s coincidental. And likewise for spreading happiness.
Of course, there’s a fair amount of luck in the system as well.
I think it’s important to remember that the idea of karma evolved in a culture that accepted reincarnation as a fact of life (lives?), as SwimmingRiddles has already pointed out. If you take it out of that context and try to evaluate it from the Western One-Life-To-Live perspective, you’re going to run into problems.
The Eastern philosophy of karma is quite a bit more sophisticated than the New Age version we usually hear about. Buddhists recognize that all causes are also effects, all effects are also causes, and all human actions are the result of many different influences interacting with one another. So it’s not a case of me getting hit by a bus because I ran over someone in a bus in a previous life. A single action may have many karmic consequences over time.
So, that said, I’m an agnostic about karma, because it’s impossible to test. But if the universe is ultimately just, then karma is about the best way I can think of to “balance the books.” In that regard, it is far more appealing to me than the idea of spending an eternity in heaven or hell as just reward for living a single lifetime that was neither completely good nor completely evil.
Soulsling, I’m not familiar with the concept of “De.” Could you elaborate? Is this a Sanskrit word?
Certainly…
I believe I may have been slightly misleading on the exact interpretation of De. If you are already familiar with the concept of Karma(Kahma) you know the Buddhists and Hindu beliefs regarding it are that it is threefold, and consists of the past or “collected” work done in both this and previous lives, the “detained”, which we have yet to compensate for, and the present Karma which we are continuously creating for ourselves. “De” is Chinese. I’m not sure if it’s Tibetan, but what I’ve been tought is that De is the positive result of Karma’s accounting for actions and their reactions. The effect of the cause that is positive that can be channeled or harbored to nurture further “good energy”. I would have to ask my Teacher/Master what the sanskrit would be for this. I hope this helps somewhat.
The cause and effect or every actions has an equal and opposite reaction theories are like this. But keep in mind that Karma specifically refers to the Universe as a whole, and time as eternal, not just what is in “our” specific “tiny” lives.
“What comes around goes around” - as to this, and what the OP intended I imagine, is more specific to this life we are in. Correct me if I’m wrong mouthbreather
P.s.-every time i read your handle, i think of ‘waiting room’ for some reason…
